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Path: utzoo!watmath!dmcanzi
From: dmcanzi@watmath.UUCP (David Canzi)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.sci,net.misc
Subject: Re: Mind and Brain
Message-ID: <8408@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Jul-84 05:32:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.8408
Posted: Sun Jul 22 05:32:10 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Jul-84 06:14:48 EDT
References: brl-vgr.507 <569@ihuxj.UUCP>, <93@mouton.UUCP>, <1135@rti-sel.UUCP> <3328@brl-tgr.ARPA>, <1556@sun.uRe: Mind and Brain
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 40

> There are yet phenomena which "physics" fails to explain, and which, in fact,
> appear to contradict some of the "laws" of "physics".
>  ...  PSI phenomena do exist, and obviously some form of "energy" is 
> involved in the process.  

     Again and again experiments claiming to provide evidence for psychic 
phenomena fail to satisfy these simple requirements:
1) Conditions must be carefully controlled to prevent cheating.  Someone trying
   to prove the existence of a phenomenon not previously known to exist
   (eg. psi) must set up his experiment so that the results can not be
   explained by phenomena already known to exist (eg. fraud).
2) Other experimenters must be able to repeat the experiment with the same
   equipment, the same procedure, and, perhaps, the same psychic and get
   similar results.  If they fail at this, the success of the original
   experiment must be attributed to dumb luck, self-delusion, or (my favourite)
   fraud.

     This discussion has really drifted off the topic, as all net discussions
seem to.  The matter at issue in the first place (well, actually, at the place
where I first joined in) was the claim of some fringe "scientist", repeated
by Shirley MacLaine, that the "energy" that makes up the soul consists of
gluons.
     Nothing was said in the article about the evidence for this bold claim,
and bold claims *must* be supported by evidence.  But I can't even imagine
what type of evidence *could* support that claim.  Nobody has ever detected
the soul.  (There was a claim once that a dying man was weighed just before,
and just after, and lost 2.5 pounds.  If this were true, and the weight loss
could not be attributed to known physical causes, then we would all surely 
have heard more about this.)  Nobody has a theoretical description of
the soul, with some indication of how it interacts with the brain.  In
order to design an experiment to detect the soul, some such description is
necessary.  There is no evidence that the soul is made of gluons,
or that it interacts with the brain, or that it even exists.
     BUT THERE ARE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO *WANT* TO BELIEVE.
     So anybody with sufficient intelligence and deficient morals can
write 200 or so pages of clever bullshit claiming to demonstrate the
existence of the soul (or PK, or the Loch Ness Monster...) and use oodles
of scientific terminology to make it sound authoritative, and make a decent
living.  If he's one of the luckier ones, he may pull down megabucks.
     And millions of suckers will, once again, get taken.